We were told that the booking of our party was a mistake, that women had never before slept at Magdalen. Dialogue: Helen to the porter, "I smell gas in my room."
Porter, "You don't smoke, do you ma'm?"
Helen, "No".
Porter, "Lucky."

In the spring of 1957 I saw that the Penn State Christian Association was sponsoring a student tour of Europe that looked very attractive to me. My buddy and fellow Chemical Engineering student Charles Anderson and I signed up for the trip, eight weeks for a thousand bucks or so.

An Oxford street, looking towards All Souls College and the Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Traveling with Christians broadened interests. Three 16th century martyrs burned at the stake for not accepting Rome were the Anglican bishops Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. They were tried at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. We saw the memorial monument, which is was erected in reaction to the 19th century pro-Catholic Oxford Movement.

The tour was more than sightseeing. At almost every destination we met with local students and one or more political party representatives or government bureauocrats. The leader, Bob Starbuck, of the PSU chaplain's staff, kept issues of political philosophy , conscience, and right action in front of us. And we played bridge or read when not otherwise occupied.

The photos in this show are digitally scanned Kodak film slides taken by me with an Argus C3. it had a range=finder to aid focusing but no light meter, so exposure was based on personal judgement of the brightness of the scene.

We flew into Berlin, the Russians were not allowing land access. There were control points between E and W Berlin, but this was before the wall. Our guide in East Berlin was a scruffy young man eager to put the best face on Communism and deplore the west.

On an outing to Wannsee, on the shore of a substantial lake inside Berlin's borders.

We had to look sharp on this trip because if we missed the stop we were headed into East Germany. We are surely drinking Berliners (weiss bier mit juis), a discovery for us. The Japanese man is Tadashi Sasaki, a Chemistry post-doc at PSU using the tour as part of his travel home.

One of the issues brought to our attention was the rearming of West Germany as part of NATO. We visited an Airforce base with the intent of determining how the new pilots felt about the issue. As if we were going to be allowed to talk to them.